Irina Roelcke

Like many people, when Irina Roelcke discovered she would have to sit the LNAT as part of her application to study law at university, she was a little apprehensive about what it would involve.

She visited the LNAT website to find out more about the test and found that it was unlike anything she’d ever done before.

“I read through the information on the website to familiarise myself with the style of test. It was the first time I was required to answer multiple choice questions and, like many of my peers, I thought these would be a doddle! I was surprised to find that the multiple-choice section was actually quite difficult, requiring me to critically analyse material and quickly understand the information held within it.

“You have to look at the text and question in detail and think carefully about what you’re being asked, and even then it’s often not obvious what the right answer is.

“I found that the more I practised answering the questions the better I got at them, and the more confident I became about sitting the test itself.”

After sitting the LNAT, Irina found she had been accepted for a place by a number of different universities. She decided to go to Queen Mary University and eventually left with a First in undergraduate law, having won accolades from tutors including the Longman’s Property I Prize and the Constance Maynard Queen Mary College Prize.

“After finishing university I applied for training contracts with a number of different law firms, and was asked to sit a verbal reasoning test at all of them,” she said.

“The test was the same style as the LNAT so having practised that style of test previously gave me a really good head start. The same principles of needing to pay close attention to the detail and reading and analysing the information applied.”

Irina was selected by and accepted a training contract with Shepherd and Wedderburn, one of the UK’s leading law firms, and is now a trainee solicitor working within the firm’s litigation team.

“Verbal reasoning tests use different skills to those I’d learnt whilst doing my degree, so without the LNAT I’d have been on a back foot when applying for training contracts.

“The style of thinking at university is very academic and theoretical, and the exams reflect that. By contrast, the skills the LNAT tests require are the same ones I use all the time now at work In that way, the LNAT was a really useful test of whether I would enjoy doing the things that form the basis of a career in law.”